It happens in the fall, one dreary but ordinary Tuesday. She works and thinks on what they need to prepare for the winter.
Things are as hard to get as ever, but, she thinks, at least the books are cheap since nobody here is fond of reading - and nobody brings them here. Except for Billy, of course. He probably has more than can be found in any three houses put together - maybe in all of the village - seven books total!
And she remembers how she had to whine or scold or trick Bill into getting every one of them - by mail, by favour. It took her weeks the first time. By now her husband is resigned to the strange idea, although he mantains that feather pillows are better for the neck.
The evening is dank and cold. Ragged clouds crawl from the West. She has finished for the night and goes out to the barn to call her men for dinner. It is odd - usually they are in much earlier. Perhaps there was more to do in the barn than Bill had thought.
Judging by the amount of pitchforks, old shoes, rotten planks and other necessities of life they have dug out of it, there is lots more to do. She turns back in disgust and goes for a candle to light her way.
Or perhaps they have not got to working, she thinks when she hears the raised voices. Men! She takes a minute to compose herself and strides up to the door with weary purpose. Curse that oaf; can't he see her boy wants to live cleanly...
'How can you do it?' her boy shouts. 'How can you do it - what have they done to you?'
'Nothin',' says her man easily.
'You rob them, Dad, you threaten them and take what you want -'
'Yeah. But we don't kill,' Bill Ferny adds in a low voice. 'We leave the unmarried to marry, and the married to repent. That's why they call me 'Let-them-suffer Bill', and why there ain't a price on my head.'
Yet, she thinks to herself.
'You still rob them,' Billy repeats. He's brave. He's fifteen. He's kissed a girl and will propose as soon as he's employed.
He's everything she's never been. She wills him to keep talking; her husband doesn't listen to her, but maybe, just maybe, he would this time.
'How do you think we bought the new pillow, kid?' grunts Bill. 'Your woolgathering doesn't put money in the pouch.'
'Then I will go away,' Billy says suddenly. 'I will go away, Dad, and you can't stop me.'
She wrenches the door open, not caring about upending the candle. Bill is half-lying on a bale of hay; he turns his head to look at her with exaggerated leisure. Billy is standing further away, almost outside the feeble light; he throws her one agonised glance -
'Dinner is growing cold,' she begins sternly.
And that is a wrong thing to say. Behind her boy, the darknes turns to greyness. She opens her mouth but finds no words - he notices it, too, and takes a step back - then suddenly, the wall just disappears, and she is blinded by a reflected glare of a midday sun, turned into a single shield of light higher than their house.
So much glass.
She stumbles away, but he doesn't. He stumbles forward.
Wait, she mouths, and no. What is happening? What is happening?
There are strange, gigantic signs above the glare - it is making her eyes water - ARNES & NOB, and before she recognizes them as letters, English letters, she recognizes them as advertisement.
'What's that sound?' Bill sighs, annoyed.
'Wait!' she screams, but Billy doesn't wait. A moment, and he's gone. The barn is solid wood, again.
'What are you shrieking at, woman? We are coming, just give us a minute.'
The candle falls down from her grasp, and she has the presence of mind to stump it out. Then she falls sideways, because Billy won't return. Not ever. That world chose him and ate him, and left her to suffer.
'Where is he?' Bill asks, puzzled. 'Boy! Where did you go? Pull yourself together, wife, - I'd better look for the fool.' He grunts and lumbers off, and his gruff voice drifts away.
'You won't find him,' she whispers. Her heart feels shriven in her chest.
(A heart can be so old, Billy told her many years ago, that it can only go around with a stick and it hurts all the time. They give it medicine, and it has to sit down and rest its feet.)
Why?
He will meet all these bloody she-devils in skimpy skirts and with their boobs all on display! What they called...ah yes...emancipated women. Her Billy!
Gone forever.
He will look at men armed with small metal tubes with ugly handles - guns, yes, they were guns - and not be afraid, and maybe die for that.
(There was a little bird in the yard yesterday. It was dead. It's not there today. Another little bird buried it. It held the shovel with its beak.)
There will be all these strange things - drugs; it all came to her easier now - that people will offer him and he won't know to refuse.
(See, Mom, this is Daddy-flower, girl-flower, and Mommy-flower.)
He will find no job until he gets some of these...papers...and they are hard to get, aren't they? Thank heaven she taught him to read and write... but they write differently...
(I will do better, I promise!)
She hides her face in her hands and cries, lying there in the cold, and sometime later Bill comes back scowling like hell and says they will have to dredge the river in the morning.
They don't find a body.
Billy, of course, doesn't turn up tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or next month.
Bill and her don't talk.
People in the village do.
When he takes Bessy and her little daughter to live in the nearest town, she sells everything and goes into domestic service. Not because she has to - because there is a little boy running in that yard, with jam in his hair, and his heart doesn't have to sit down and rest its feet.